COVID-19: Lessons from the Spanish flu

More than a century after the Spanish flu of 1918, another deadly virus, the coronavirus, invaded and destroyed our common humanity. The flu lasted for two years, killing more than 50 million people worldwide.

The true origin of the 1918 influenza pandemic is unknown, as there are so many secrets about the origin of COVID-19 today. As a neutral party, Spain was the first country to publicly report on a pandemic, as propaganda in war-torn countries allowed only news of encouragement during World War I. Therefore, the Spanish flu has become a popular term.

Like the Spanish flu, the coronavirus lasts for over a year and kills thousands of people every day. Deaths continue to rise over the years, and everyone wonders if the world is about to witness another Spanish flu that has hit rapidly.

The current pandemic may be devastating, but the Spanish flu pandemic remains the worst in world history. By the time the three waves of the Spanish flu struck the world in 1918 and 1919, at least 50 million people had died.

Nevertheless, it is the newspaper’s belief that the world will make this pandemic stronger. With the help of technological and medical advances, the world is unlikely to experience the number of deaths recorded during the Spanish flu. Then they didn’t even know it was a virus. Research on microorganisms has been going on for decades, and they understood that it was transferred from person to person through respiratory drops by coughing and sneezing. However, the virus did not have a sufficiently powerful microscope and was not discovered until the 1930s. So not only was it difficult to test, it simply didn’t exist.

The seriousness of the pandemic had two major problems: warfare and limited scientific knowledge. This lack of knowledge did not adversely affect infection control behavior, but effective treatment and prevention methods were underutilized.

The Spanish flu is reported to be more infectious than COVID-19, causing symptoms much earlier and being much more deadly. Also, unlike COVID-19, which poses the greatest risk to the elderly, the Spanish flu has also targeted young people. It affected everyone, young and old. But it killed the healthiest people disproportionately. The prime ministers were quickly overwhelmed. So the fear that the people animated in the fall of 1918 were qualitatively different.

Many of the people who die of COVID-19 today are succumbing to pneumonia and respiratory problems and have become established because their immune system is weakened by the fight against the virus. This is what the coronavirus shares with the Spanish flu. However, the mortality rate from COVID-19 is many times lower than the mortality rate from the Spanish flu. Despite containment measures such as various levels of intergovernmental coordination, quarantine of incidents, and closure of public places, the world lost 50 million people during the Spanish flu.

This should be a lesson for governments, especially the Nigerian government, to avoid politics and do everything necessary to defeat COVID-19. I commend the government’s efforts so far, but in reality, COVID-19 is still there, killing people on a daily basis.

The federal government recently announced that it is considering another blockade in the high-incidence states of Abuja, Lagos, Kaduna and the plateau. This is because the World Health Organization (WHO) has also warned that the new coronavirus variant is highly contagious and is responsible for the large number of cases and deaths in the second wave.

President Muhammadu Buhari recently said that as the country faces a surge in cases, 6.45 billion N (16.94) to set up oxygen production plants at 38 sites to assist in the treatment of COVID-19 patients. Million dollars) approved. However, the government must recognize that the problem cannot be solved by mere allocation of funds.

We urge the government to modify it to address the myriad challenges facing the country’s health sector. The government is mobilizing money to buy vaccines, but the urgent need to address the challenges facing the health sector should not be ignored. Vaccine availability does not rule out health care issues.

100 years ago, people died of the Spanish flu due to limited scientific knowledge. There were no quality treatments or vaccines. But today, as the world advances in science and technology, we have hope for vaccines. Therefore, the current crisis requires us all to act as individuals and governments to stay alive.